The present invention relates to automatic musical composition methods and apparatus suitable for use, for example, in generating an auxiliary melody (duet, trio or the like), counter melody or like melody related to a main melody. More particularly, the present invention concerns a novel musical composition technique which permits generation of an auxiliary melody or counter melody rich in musical characteristics by, for example, detecting important hit points, such as downbeat hit points, from a rhythm pattern to be used for generating a main-melody-related melody and then imparting pitches of chord-component notes to the detected important hit points of the rhythm pattern and pitches of scale notes to unimportant hit points (other than the important hit points) of the rhythm pattern.
There have been known electronic musical instruments of a type having a function that, in response to manual performance of melody and chord parts on a keyboard, automatically imparts the performance with a duet part (one note added below a corresponding note the melody) or trio part (two notes added below a corresponding note of the melody).
Further, as an example of an automatic musical composition apparatus capable of composing a counter melody, there has been proposed one which is designed to detect chords and melody characteristics from a main melody and generate a counter melody in accordance with the detected chords and melody characteristics.
In the above-mentioned electronic music instrument, however, what is imparted to each melody note are one or more of a plurality of notes that compose a chord at the current time point, so that the tone generation of notes tend to be generated in an arpeggio-like style and thus would lead to an unsmooth melody. Namely, the conventional electronic music instrument is arranged to only select and impart chord-component notes to a real-time performance, rather than performing necessary processes after acquisition of necessary information of a whole music piece as in normal musical composition processes, and thus it could not produce a melody rich in musical characteristics which can be sung as in a real duet or trio.
Further, with the above-mentioned automatic musical composition apparatus, chords and melody characteristics can not be easily detected from an existing melody and thus it is difficult to create a counter melody which well suits or matches the main melody and is rich in musical characteristics.
In view of the foregoing, it is an object to provide a novel automatic musical composition method and apparatus which can automatically create an auxiliary melody or counter melody rich in musical characteristics.
It is another object to provide an automatic musical composition method and apparatus which can automatically generate a main melody as well as an auxiliary melody or counter melody.
According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided an automatic musical composition method which comprises: a first step of supplying a rhythm pattern indicative of timing of respective hit points of a plurality of tones; a second step of discriminating between predetermined important hit points and unimportant hit points other than the important hit points in the rhythm pattern supplied by the first step; a third step of supplying at least a chord progression and scale information; and a fourth step of allocating, to each of the important hit points discriminated by the second step, any one of chord-component notes of chords specified by the chord progression supplied by the third step and allocating, to each of the unimportant hit points, any one of scale notes corresponding to the scale information. Here, a melody is created on the basis of the notes allocated to individual ones of the hit points by the fourth step.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided an automatic musical composition method which comprises: a first step of supplying a first rhythm pattern indicative of timing of respective hit points of a plurality of tones for a first melody to be created and a second rhythm pattern indicative of timing of respective hit points of a plurality of tones for a second melody to be created; a second step of discriminating between predetermined important hit points and unimportant hit points other than the important hit points in the first rhythm pattern supplied by the first step, and discriminating between predetermined important hit points and unimportant hit points other than the important hit points in the second rhythm pattern supplied by the first step; a third step of supplying at least a chord progression and scale information; and a fourth step of allocating a note to each of the important hit points discriminated in the first rhythm pattern, taking into account at least chords specified by the chord progression supplied by the third step, and allocating, to each of the unimportant hit points in the first rhythm pattern, any one of scale notes corresponding to the scale information supplied by the third step; and a fifth step of allocating, to each of the important hit points discriminated in the second rhythm pattern by the second step, any one of the chord-component notes of the chords specified by the chord progression supplied by the third step, and allocating, to each of the unimportant hit points in the second rhythm pattern, any one of the scale notes corresponding to the scale information. Here, a first melody is created on the basis of the notes allocated to individual ones of the hit points by the fourth step, and a second melody is created on the basis of the notes allocated to individual ones of the hit points by the fifth step.
The present invention may be constructed and implemented not only as the method invention as discussed above but also as an apparatus invention. Also, the present invention may be arranged and implemented as a software program for execution by a processor such as a computer or DSP, as well as a storage medium storing such a program. Further, the processor used in the present invention may comprise a dedicated processor with dedicated logic built in hardware, not to mention a computer or other general-purpose type processor capable of running a desired software program.
While the embodiments to be described herein represent the preferred form of the present invention, it is to be understood that various modifications will occur to those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit of the invention. The scope of the present invention is therefore to be determined solely by the appended claims.